“Back in the ’80s and ’90s, there wasn’t real access to higher-level fashion,” Kate David Hudson, co-founder of online fashion magazine Editorialist, tells the Times. “It was the heyday of business casual, and stores did well selling core staples.”

“But now, everybody sees what’s on the runways on social media and on blogs, and everybody’s a critic, and shoppers want it as soon as they see it,” Hudson said. “Brands like Gap just feel very dated.”

The risk of trying to predict fashion trends a year in advance is weighing on the success of retailers such as Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ann Taylor, American Eagle, and others, according to Goldman Sachs.

If these retailers have a “fashion miss,” it means markdowns, which hurts profits.

That strategy works two ways, according to Hansen. First, it encourages customers to come back to the store often. It also means that if the shopper wants to buy something, he or she feels the need to buy it to guarantee it won’t sell out.

Traditional retailers need to figure out how to update collections more often if they want to stay relevent.